Nyame and Asase Yaa: the Sky Father and the Earth Mother
In the beginning there were two, and they were enough.
Any Akan funeral; any farm on a Thursday, when the earth rests.
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Nyame and Asase Yaa: the Sky Father and the Earth Mother
In the beginning there were two, and they were enough.
Above was Nyame — also called Onyankopɔn, "the one who alone is great," and Odomankoma, "the endless maker." He is not a god who is prayed to with noise. The Akan say Obi nkyerɛ akwadaa Nyame — no one needs to point out God to a child. Every child looks up on their own.
Below was Asase Yaa, the earth. She has no temple and no priest, because she needs neither; she is underfoot everywhere. She is the ground you farm, the ground you bury your dead in, the ground that receives you back. She was born on a Thursday, and so Thursday is her day. On Thursday, in the old observance, no hoe breaks the soil and no grave is dug. To till the earth on her day is to disturb a woman in her rest.
Between them, everything: the rain that falls from him onto her, and the yam that rises from her toward him. When an Akan elder pours libation, he tips the first of the drink to the ground and speaks upward — Nyame first, Asase Yaa second, then the ancestors, then the living. That order is the cosmology in a single gesture. You do not have to explain it. You just watch the schnapps hit the dust.
And when a man is buried, a little earth is put into the coffin with him, so that Asase Yaa knows he is hers, and receives him.
If you visit Ghana. Any Akan funeral; any farm on a Thursday, when the earth rests.
In the beginning there were two, and they were enough.
Above was Nyame — also called Onyankopɔn, "the one who alone is great," and Odomankoma, "the endless maker." He is not a god who is prayed to with noise. The Akan say Obi nkyerɛ akwadaa Nyame — no one needs to point out God to a child. Every child looks up on their own.
Below was Asase Yaa, the earth. She has no temple and no priest, because she needs neither; she is underfoot everywhere. She is the ground you farm, the ground you bury your dead in, the ground that receives you back. She was born on a Thursday, and so Thursday is her day. On Thursday, in the old observance, no hoe breaks the soil and no grave is dug. To till the earth on her day is to disturb a woman in her rest.
Between them, everything: the rain that falls from him onto her, and the yam that rises from her toward him. When an Akan elder pours libation, he tips the first of the drink to the ground and speaks upward — Nyame first, Asase Yaa second, then the ancestors, then the living. That order is the cosmology in a single gesture. You do not have to explain it. You just watch the schnapps hit the dust.
And when a man is buried, a little earth is put into the coffin with him, so that Asase Yaa knows he is hers, and receives him.